Page 66 of Indecently Employed
Maddy shot up, wielding her darning egg as if it were a dagger, pointing it at Susanna’s face. “You! So content to live the fine life, never thinking of your family. You’d rather teach some boot blacking peddler’s bastard than your own flesh and blood! Well, so be it!”
Susanna gasped, horrified at the words pouring forth from her elder sister’s mouth. “The Sedleys are a perfectly respectable family,” she managed, her voice quavering with anger.
Maddy set her hands on her hips with aharrumph. “I have made inquiries, sister. I know exactly the nature of your employer. Full of vices, madness, duels, and…” She stopped before leveling the last words of her accusation, her cheeks flaming. She blinked several times, then choked out, “Among other things better not spoken of.” Her eyes darted over to her daughter, as if Susanna had missed her meaning. Madge remained as still as possible, as if attempting to disappear into the fading wallpaper.
Their mother’s gasp and subsequent wail, paired with stern shouts from her father, barely registered. Susanna tipped her chin up and looked down her nose at Maddy, a difficult feat since she and her sister were nearly equal in height.
“So be it, then,” she said, her body shaking with fury. “For all the faults of his family, Mr. Sedley has never slighted me. And I refuse to abandon Charlotte, regardless of her parentage.”
Maddy stared at her, her face twisted grotesquely with rage.
But Susanna refused to yield, holding her posture straight and her countenance firm even as her heart raced. She defiantly stared Maddy down, refusing to break. And indeed, it was her sister who did so first, looking away and shaking her head, then glaring at Susanna one more time before turning to look at their keening mother. Maddy rushed over to her. It was a woeful image, the decrepit woman forcing an ugly, mewling cry as she clutched at her face with her mittened hands. Maddy slipped an arm around her, whispering soothing words in her ear in between shooting dark looks at Susanna.
Then her father spoke again. “Susanna,” he said, indicating the door to the hall.
Heart still pounding in her ears, she followed him out of the drawing room and down the dark, frigid hallway to his small library. He fiddled with the lamp for several seconds, and finally the darkness abated, the room dimly lit with a warm, flickering light that cast massive dancing shadows across the floor and walls. It gave the library an ominous appearance, yet Susanna was not frightened. Not in the manner she had been in her youth, when she’d been brought in here on many occasions for a long lecture on the feminine virtues of patience and kindness as illustrated by the gospel of Luke, dubbed the “gospel of womanhood” by some fusty clergyman acquaintance of her father.
Her father who now sat back in his chair, puffing at his pipe as he thought. Susanna decided against speaking. She’d already said her piece.
Finally he leaned forward, the spindly chair creaking under his weight. “This position with Mr. Sedley, is it tolerable?”
“Yes,” she responded, her voice tentative.
“Your recompense is, ah…” He coughed a little before replacing his pipe. “Fair?”
“Yes, I consider it more than fair.”
“Ah.” He frowned, but looked back at her from under bushy gray eyebrows. “A handsome amount, then?”
She nodded.
“And Mr. Sedley, he is a godly man?”
Susanna blinked, unsure of how to answer. Her mind rushed through her index of memories, wondering what exactly the correct answer was, when she stumbled upon it. “He has the utmost respect for religion. He would never criticize such a…” She paused, trying to remember that night in Ajax’s library, when she’d first begun to truly understand him. When she’d noticed, in addition to how handsome he was, the innate goodness of his nature, and how dearly he wanted everyone to be at ease. “He’d never criticize such a comfort.”
Her father furrowed his brows. “A comfort? Quite the reductive view, that is.”
Susanna shook her head, a gentle smile on her lips. “No, he is very sharp. And kind. Very attentive. I am pleased to stay on.”
Her father studied her for a moment, and a spark of worry struck her, that he might figure it all out. But then he spoke once more, and her fears dissipated.
“And his daughter? She is truly baseborn?”
“Yes, but…”
“The pay is handsome, you say?”
“Yes?” Susanna said, more of a question than an answer.
“Well, that settles it. You have my blessing. And may the Lord bless you as well.”
Hope surged in her heart. She would not have voluntarily left her position, even if her father had demanded it, but it was a great relief to have his approval all the same.
“And Madge?” she ventured to ask.
“I daresay that Maddy shall have to manage her instruction on her own.”
Susanna briefly considered suggesting that he could perhaps assist with Madge’s education as well. Instead, she nodded.
